Quote:
Originally Posted by smariner
Given that there are more than 4000 reviews of the Kindle on amazon.com -- I would guess that there are more than 34,000 Kindles out there (typically, less than 10% of the buyers write feedback). But, who knows? some non-buyers might have left feedback as well?
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Or maybe more than 10% of the buyers felt impelled to leave feedback.
Who knows?
Personally, I think the question of how
many Kindles have been sold is fundamentally meaningless. The question is "Is the Kindle selling well enough that Amazon will continue to sell and support it, and make content available for it?" Thus far, the answer is yes.
The issue for both Amazon and Sony is that they are big outfits that need a significant ROI to justify doing something. Senior management are essentially custodians of Other People's Money, with a responsibility to invest funds where they will get the best return. The issue is one of opportunity cost: what might this money return if invested elsewhere? Could it make
more money invested elsewhere than where it currently is?
Sony killed off the Clie PDA line, even though it was profitable, because they thought they could make more money investing the funds elsewhere, so there's a question in the back of various minds about Sony's commitment to the PRS. Similar questions can be raised about Amazon. They haven't released any actual numbers (and Bezos was remarkably opaque about it when the issue came up in the last Amazon quarterly conference call with analysts covering them), and we have no idea what targets they have and what they consider success.
We
can assume that someone like Bookeen will be very happy with sales that Amazon would consider a dismal failure -- they are a small company with less overhead who doesn't need big numbers to make a go of it.
I consider speculations about how many Kindles were sold about equivalent to reading tea leaves. It may be an amusing way to pass some time, but I'd keep the 10lb sack of salt handy to take with any results.
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Dennis